How to get your party to concentrate on THE ADVENTURE!

[Drake2009]

So, i have a party filled with teens who wont shut up! seriously it takes us an hour to get through one encounter! im so tired of it. advice ive had so far is to have a thief steal from them and to have some kind of apocalypse so they have to keep moving.

[Talar]

I would suggest talking to them and ask them if they are actually interested in playing the game, and if they are interested ask them for some respect.

[Drake2009]

they respect me and they do want to play lol. they just... get excited and take time to calm down

[Yael]

they respect me and they do want to play lol. they just... get excited and take time to calm down

I know where this is going to. Ask them to calm down, try to prepare moar interesting stuff to your adventures based on their preferences/past games. On the worst, make them find a rival party that arrives first at places and does stuff because they took too long to do their stuff.

[atomicwaffle]

Force them to stay in character, limit the OOC chat. Bring like a DS or something, if they don't want to play, let them not play. Less work for you by not having to think as much stuff up.

[pwykersotz]

I only game with adults, so I haven't practiced this on teens...but try to keep going. If they get sidetracked, start describing the next leg of the adventure. If they're that excited about the game, they'll snap to attention.

On the other hand, there are worse things than excitable players. It'll probably be a compromise. Maybe let them chatter for 5 minutes or so before pushing the adventure.

[Crake]

I find that playing with smaller groups tends to alleviate this problem. The more people there are, the longer the rounds take, the more inclined people are to talk to others isntead of thinking about their turn. And when you're out of combat, and trying to come up with a plan or something, it can be a struggle to get heard, so people just talk to the person next to them about whatever.

How big is your group atm?

[KorbeltheReader]

I only game with adults, so I haven't practiced this on teens...but try to keep going. If they get sidetracked, start describing the next leg of the adventure. If they're that excited about the game, they'll snap to attention.

On the other hand, there are worse things than excitable players. It'll probably be a compromise. Maybe let them chatter for 5 minutes or so before pushing the adventure.

Agreed. Sometimes it helps to schedule things a half hour early so people arrive and have time to get some conversation out of their system before you start. Maybe get a pizza and start with that, and get into the game after you eat and chat? The food coma can help calm them down.

Otherwise, yeah, people are chatty. Your games will usually have an element of that.

[Madara]

-I give bonus XP for people RPing well
-Try to tailor the adventure/ quest give to their character.
-Maybe its the wrong style of adventure. I find a semi-humorous game keeps their attention and whenever they do get distracted, its usually to talk about the game.
-I would suggest accepting that the pace will be slower. I've transitioned from high-school students to college students, and its still roughly the same. Have them enjoy the bits of adventure that they do go through.
-Figure out their estimated attention span, you may have to have more shorter sessions as opposed to one longer session.

[Red Fel]

There could be any number of reasons why a the players don't focus.

It could be player-side problems. Perhaps the players only gather to socialize. The game is an excuse to be with friends. This is perfectly acceptable. If this is the case, keep the game light, so that it won't distract from the real reason everyone's there. Perhaps the players are a bit immature. It happens. You either find ways to engage them despite this, or you figure out something to do that doesn't require a great deal of focus. Perhaps the players have taken a dislike to your game for some reason. Maybe it's too hard, maybe it's not what they expected. Try to clarify expectations.
It could also be DM-side problems. Maybe your campaign isn't engaging the players. Maybe they're not feeling it and you need to make some changes to keep them interested. Maybe it's engaging the players, but not all at once. If one player occupies the spotlight during a scene, the others may look elsewhere for entertainment. Maybe your expectations are skewed. Putting it right out there. There's always some degree of table-chatter, but how much is "too much" varies from table to table. What may be ordinary for some tables might strike you as a lack of focus.
Whatever the reason, the first solution is the best solution: Talk to your players. Be fair and listen. Ask them what they want out of a campaign, what they feel they might not be getting. Try to meet them partway.

This isn't a case of respect. There are plenty of people I respect whose games I would never join, for various reasons. Likely, it's either a case of player-side issues, or DM-side issues, or both; either way, communication solves problems.

Things you can do to grab and keep player interest: Give the players homework. What? No, really, hear me out. People feel invested in something when they've invested something in it. (It's a truism, but that doesn't make it any less true.) Give your players assignments to do between sessions. Ask them to provide campaign ideas and plot hook suggestions, help you to flesh out the world. Then start implementing these suggestions. Suddenly, it's not just a game in which they happen to be playing, it's their game, their world that they helped design. Easter eggs. Have you ever watched a movie based on a property (such as a book or comic) that you already knew, and seen those little in-jokes they snuck in for the people who knew the stuff? Your players will start paying attention when they realize those easter eggs are hidden in various places. Character spotlights. This plays into my first point about player homework. Have your players provided character backgrounds? Ask for those. Then be prepared to use them. If they mention a hometown, put it on the map. If they mention friends or enemies growing up, they're now NPCs. If they mention a lifelong goal, start dropping hints about it into your plot. Make the characters' individual hopes and dreams relevant to the world. Then give each one a chance to shine. Got to get into a meeting with the King? The Captain of the Guard is your old chum from school. Got to explore that ancient temple? Say, those inscriptions look familiar - aren't they the ones from your missing father's journal? And so on. Suddenly, each character feels like the destined protagonist of some major story.
Those are just a few tips. Generally, if you can grab the players like that, they'll focus a lot more.

(I might also suggest cutting back a bit on the sugar and/or caffeine if you find people get a little wired.)

[jedipotter]

So, i have a party filled with teens who wont shut up! seriously it takes us an hour to get through one encounter! im so tired of it. advice ive had so far is to have a thief steal from them and to have some kind of apocalypse so they have to keep moving.

Start ''Early''. If you plan to play the game for five hours, like 6pm-11pm, start at 4pm. Give everyone a couple hours to goof off, talk, and such. Then once that is all out of their system, sit down and start the game.


Have more action. Avoid a ''normal boring game''. Don't have them sit around at a tavern, or try to figure out a puzzle, or talk to NPCs. Have more action. Keep the game fast paced and full of action.

Have more rewards. The whole ''taking tons of time to gain something'' does not work so well with teens. They want instant gratification. A great trick here is to have lots of chargeable items. Not the boring ones in the book, but more homebrewed ones. Like a sword +5 that obliterates things, that needs power gems to do so. Just keep the gems ''easy'' enough to get from time to time......don't do the ''oh, you might find one a year''.

[Drake2009]

cool advice! they really do like the game and stuff but... they are teenagers so its kinda weird. They just like to talk a lot and over each other so much that i can barely think! but thankfully ima get a break once summer is here. kinda feel bad, had stuff to do the last 2 games and wasnt able to come and dm lol. im thinking about bringing a bat to the next game so they dont kill me for taking their gold... seriously i think they might strangle me with some string. The teacher is learning to become a dm and hopefully we will be able to split the group or something. The group is like 8 people and we were playing a 3-4 box campaign. we also have a 2nd group now but they are almost all 9th graders and going to highschool (we have junior high 7-9 where i live) the group will hopefully be able to cope with the fact that i am taking their gold. im a new dm (this group was my first time and im just winging it lol, but i am fantastic at winging it) so i hope im not failing super hard. i hope my group understands and doesnt murder me as soon as they hear the words "You wake up and realize some of your stuff is GAK.... leh go o'h mah throt.... *COUGH* *gasps for air*... I was gonna say your stuff has been upgraded... (please dont kill me...) thankfully the only buff guy there hasnt been paying attention... i think i could defend myself long enough to get to the group of super giant mostly buff 9th graders lol. They'd protect me cause i recently gave them some more lollipops. ANYWAY i think thats enough. hopefully i havent broken any rules, i kinda skimmed the rules!

[Drake2009]

i just edited away about 1/3 of that post....

[Adverb]

Red Fel's got some quality stuff to say, and you should read it twice.

But mostly it sounds like you're running a game for a bunch of 14 year olds, and this is how that tends to go.